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fmdxjerome · 7 years ago

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Songs of life;; ft. Marie Seo, the ex.

I remember your smell when I touched you How you used to talk to me It all hurts so much now How could I waste so much time on someone who doesn’t even love me Even though all the time I spent, its just worthless Now I feel like I don’t even wanna live anymore Save me

( listen )

lyrical breakdown under the cut.

wordcount. over 3000

GOODBYE. ( russ )

When Jerome first heard Marie cheated on him, he saw red. Everything he so holy believed in crumbled down like brittle stone in those hallways he called home. How could she. How dared she. After everything. After all the painful secrets he whispered in the night, the long talks about how much he wanted to be wanted, how she promised to want him for everything he is, to love him for it. From the eyes he used to be bullied for all the way down deep to the soul that so eagerly awaited the love of his life. He had hit Hugo with such force he almost broke his nose and he was ready to do so much more if he wasn’t pulled off of him. Pathetic. Hugo was pathetic to use her against him, as a trophy he discarded just to one up the offer of a lifetime. ( the detail he went into as to how she moaned his name, oh, Jerome could’ve broken him. ) But he was just complicit in the crime, an accomplice who was deserving of a punishment just not as brutal as reserved for the main culprit. So he walked after getting kicked out. Just deafening silence was there when she ran up to him, her eyes wide after he found out her little secret and removed the sterling necklace from the slender neck he used to whisper sweet nothings to before kissing the sweet skin. His fingers brushed over her skin as he took off the jewelry and he swore she felt cold to the touch but burned like thousand flames then. It was the way he told her she was a worthless whore that left that being worse than the bleeding Hugo had to endure. He said it like she was the ugliest person in the world. He said it like those two years meant nothing. He said it with so much venom lacing his gaze that even a snake wouldn’t come near him. Yet, the words fell so hollow and empty, void of whatever curled around his words usually when talking to her. And he left her then, necklace in hand and back turned to never see her again.

What’s most painful is that he could’ve seen the warning signs. He remembered her friend Hyuna looking at him in pity, like he was another victim. He remembered her saying he was too cute for this when they were stuck in Marie’s apartment for awhile before running her fingers through his hair. He remembered how confused he was before he heard the door unlock and the familiar voice that was like an angels choir called out a “Hyuna, Romeo, I grabbed lunch on the way!” ( he remembered how fast he stood up from the couch to kiss her when she questioned him if something happened when she was gone all the while a smirk decorated her lips. he missed the way her eyes rolled when he told her he could never and that he loved her. hyuna just sighed. ) but he loved her so much that he was blinded by any voice that told him to stop.

A few months later he found himself shouting into his phone when Marie called him and he broke. It didn’t help he was drunk ( which freddy warned khaled for but khaled just thought getting drunk with his friend might loosen him up a bit, get him less stressed. ) and so agitated with the voice on the other side not even apologizing. He asked her how many others she fucked. He asked her different things I won’t repeat because they are cruel, but he never asked her “How could you do this to me?” like he wanted to. She never got the chance to answer him for Khaled hit the phone out of his hand and they ended up fighting for a while before he eventually cried against his shoulder.

I believe the original song is really about a woman the singer, Russ, dated and that she was a prostitute, but, I felt the anger and disdain resonated.

Also I can see the “Paul” character resonating with Jerome, like in broad lines he is talking to himself. That he was just a puppy on a leash, that he loved but he was just so engrossed by her allure that he never realized how much of an awful person she was and, in the midst of rage, he would “leave” when he finds more women to have. He’s a loser for falling for her, just like the many others he was blissfully unaware of, and still is.

SOMETHING IN THE WAY. ( jorja smith )

After anger comes grief. He thought he could move on. He felt so powerful when he spat the insult in her face but he felt so weak when the car of his teacher brought him home. He still had hope, she was his lover but he left her. He packed his bags and flew to the other side of the world for her. He kicked her out and started a new life as Jerome Gauthier, the roué. Jerome Gauthier, the debauched. Jerome Gauthier, the.. broken. He couldn’t shake her and he hated himself for it. He hated crying in his bed at night, the loneliness of his bed magnified when the body of a beautiful girl grew absent after leaving his apartment. He hated not being able to enjoy his new lifestyle, to get acquainted with the feeling of being wanted solely because his words were smooth like woven silk and his body was like that of a Greek God. He hated missing her, missing the way her head laid upon his chest in the dead of night when he decided to stay over at her place, not noticing the way her nose scrunched up when he mumbled another loving word to her seemingly sleeping frame before falling in a slumber himself. Because he knows she’s living life, he isn’t as confident as he seems to be. He knew she wasn’t mourning the death of their relationship, matter of fact she might have even been under another guy the second he left.

And he tries to bargain with himself now, good things don’t last. They follow the way of the wind, rush through his hair, tickle his skin, warm him up before the breeze leaves again.

“’Cause only the sun in the summer lasts. / Even the sun doesn’t seem to last.”

But does he believe himself?

I FALL APART. ( post malone )

This song is one that fits the most with Jerome’s situation seeing as the raw pain feels very reminiscent of how he feels, how he felt.

“She told me that I’m not enough.” It was never vocalized but to have chosen this particular suitor to deceit him with solidified a lot of his insecurities, not only physical ones, leaving him broken and scared. “She cut too deep, now she left me scarred.” He’s afraid to enter another relationship because of her, never having it hurt this bad. “And now I’m taking these shots like it’s Novocaine.” Drowning himself in alcohol was a coping mechanism, is a coping mechanism. An escape from the painful reminders that he does not have her, that she broke his heart, that another was better; a meaningless better than everything he did for her, gave her, in the two years of their relationship.

I don’t think I have to go into much detail about this one, the lyrics are very self explanatory. But just a fun fact. this was the song that I had on loop during the writings of “Feeling like I sold my soul.” and will continue to loop as I write “Devil in the form of a whore.”

EYES NOSE LIPS. ( tablo, taeyang )

He wants her to leave his life but she keeps returning to him and he knows she’ll never fade. Even when he escaped to Korea she was on his mind and when he finally felt happy for once she came crashing into his life again as he viewed her pretty face on a billboard in the heart of Seoul. He remembered the way his heart dropped all the way to his feet, shattering like fine china, whilst his eyes just stared so intensely out of the window of the car like he witnessed a car crash before the driver passed the ghost of his past.

He wants to move on so badly but it feels like she keeps cutting the wings of time. The wound never heals, just when it seems like it is she shows up again, prettier than the day before and with more intent behind whatever she would do to him next. Even when the feeling of falling in love slowly coaxes him to sew the pieces back together she comes in with a pair of scissors to cut the threads, telling him “No. You remember me, still. Compare them to me. All of them.” and he does, comparing them all. Except- ah, Tokyo was an interesting time.

FUCK LOVE. ( xxxtentacion ft. trippie redd )

There had been a part of him that wanted her back, a twisted part yearning for the days when he still had her. “I want her to wish she still had me inside of her.” was something he whispered between heavy breathing whilst having sex with one of her friends ( which was a really stupid thing to do, say that. not to mention doing her friend. ah, that wasn’t the smartest decision he has made. ) and every time she popped up at industry events as the beautiful model she was, this tiny voice got him craving her. Yet, heartbreak was so much stronger. It gnawed at him like some kind of starving animal as he watched her laugh so agonizingly beautiful with friends before he dove away to the nearest bathroom just to regain his composure. Just to remain being Yuddy.

One time he cried in a bathroom, silent and lonely in the earlier days of his career. Someone caught him upon exiting, eyes kissed an irritated red as he made a beeline straight to the exit, leaving the event sooner than he had liked.

BITTER FUCK. ( joji )

He changed because of her, he treats the girls he’s with badly because of her, he feels lost because of her. People around him see him as what she made him out to be, an asshole behind the scenes. Someone people don’t want to grow close to, that is, if they don’t want to dig for something more. Brush the dirt away, get your hands dirty, scoop out the earth and find someone that loves such simple things like staying indoors or cooking for a loved one. Find someone who is passionate about so much more than just his music, just his craft. But that’s so deep down, who wants to take the effort? One did.

Maybe he shouldn’t blame her entirely, there is always a part of him that could just start over. That part is so small, though, and so terrifying.

EX CALLING. ( 6lack )

After Tokyo she kept pestering him, like she was daring him to do something about it. She played up the rumours of them dating with cryptic instagram posts and sharing songs of Jerome so casually with little hearts attached to it. She even left a message, one that almost made him drop his phone when he checked his twitter dm’s “Romeo, let’s talk again.” let’s talk again. It was in such contrast with the other messages he got from exes that he left behind in France who now wanted to holler at him as he grew famous, because hers had some unknown intent behind it. He doesn’t know why she does it. He doesn’t know why she feels the need to reach out to him in these ways. He knows she doesn’t miss him, she made that clear but what then? He tries to be dismissive, just like the laid back mood of the song, but it’s hard to.

Especially when her presence in his life is so crucial right now.

AYALA. ( xxxtentacion )

Reminiscent of the days, he regrets even meeting her in the first place. He could pinpoint what should’ve happened for him to never have ran into her. Stay back at the apartment as Freddy and Khaled went out to buy food in their hungover state, enroll a year or two later in school to focus on his music or even enroll into a rivaling film academy he’d been eyeing too, maybe never moving to Paris in the first place but staying put in the homely house of his grandfather in Laval, study something else, go somewhere else. All these things to never have to feel what he felt now. There was something toxic about the relationship they had, with him relying too much on her as he drowned her in affection whilst she saw other men during the brief parts they were separated. It was that infatuation that fed it, that building her up like she was a piece of marble and he spend years carving out every feature only to fall in love with it when it was complete. And it was that infatuation that ruined it, too.

DEMONS. ( joji )

Jerome is nearing his breaking point but he tries very hard to keep his cool. He’s behaving himself even though she keeps pushing him and pushing him to do something. “Please just let me go.” alludes to me that he wants her to allow him the escape of moving on. He’s in love but can’t love because of her ( the demons are taking his heart ) she almost ruined things between Julien and him in an already fragile time. They fought because of her. And he just warns her to stop, to have her stop messing with his life and just have him escape her so he could be lonely but not alone, so he could love from a distance, just. She needs to let him go, he’s seen enough.

THAT FEELING. ( russ )

“I was ready for you, you weren’t ready for me.” It’s a realization he needs to have. He was on a different level when it came to their relationship, he might have thought about asking her hand after graduating school making him the first to be engaged out of their friendship instead of Khaled, he might have suggested living together if she followed him to Korea to have him pursue his songwriter career, he might have seen a future for them. She might have seen him as security for no one would run around for her like he did, she might have liked the stark contrast between the loving words whispered by the man she promised to love versus the filthy profanities thrown at her by the men she promised to lust, she might have seen a future for them if her charades kept up.

Drinking himself stupid he tried to numb himself from the pain of loving her, the future he saw before more meaningful due to his situation than just a simple “I love you, I could marry you.” but as time went on and he met someone new, he started getting drunk for different reasons. “It’s not for you anymore.” Love, she doesn’t own a monopoly on it anymore. He drinks now out of fear ( her fault but not for her. ) it was a strange time when the reasons shifted but he hardly noticed until one fateful day.

“That feeling, that doesn’t go away just did.”

CARRY ON. ( xxxtentacion )

Take a trip back to around the ‘13s when she was still a fresh memory of his past, a memory that dug into his chest like sharpened knives, a memory that ruined so many pretty girls for him but a memory nonetheless. He struggled through the days, anger, sadness, desperation, all these emotions consuming the frail man that looked nothing but confident on the outside. The fact that he had to bottle it up was something that ruined him. Nobody could help him, understand him, comfort him - he had no shoulder to cry on. It was himself doing it, but she couldn’t influence his life anymore. If no one knew she could disappear in thin air like a burned up piece of paper as a hedonist formed from the sprawled out ashes that laid on the ground.

Nights were so cold, but he carried on. Khaled said stupid things like “I saw Marie today, in the supermarket, she said hi to me.” which always granted him an elbow in the ribs from a concerned Freddy who would glance at the way Jerome’s face contort in a grimace on screen, like he just witnessed a death, but he carried on. He always carried on, even in the months when a pretty girl called Heera reminded him just too much of his ex and his mind was way too present in the past. Yoonah helped during that, granting him distractions when bodies felt too frightening to touch. It even prompted Frederic to cryptically try and ask if he was starting to move on, but his words fell silent when Khaled jumped in with a “She’s hotter than Marie, that Yoonah girl, that’s for sure.” and he noticed Jerome’s face fall just upon hearing her name. But he carried on.

“How did you get here? I’m drunk and confused. I try to be patient with you.”

Return to the present. Or, 2015 till the present. She could’ve gone anywhere in the world, but she ended up in Seoul, South Korea. Never did he hear her wish to become a model even when her friend Hyuna visited and told her she could totally work in the same branch as her. She could’ve been anywhere on October 16th, but she ended up in Tokyo, Japan, lips pressed to an ear as a familiar nickname rolled off her tongue. Never did he think he could keep his resolve, and he almost didn’t, but he tried so hard. His patience ran thin with every word she spoke. And the hotel, ah, he broke.

But he carried on.

WORLDSTAR MONEY. ( joji )

Self reflection. What he has done to himself isn’t normal. Changing himself to almost a 180 of what he used to be, speaking no words of his past with her, fearing love when opportunities are laid out for him to take. And he knows this. He has had many days were he’s been angry at himself for ruining things, for not letting himself indulge in certain aspects of his life for the sole reason that maybe it would work out, especially now. But he knows the second one would hurt so much more and with who had his affection, he’d loose so much.

“So tenderly you watch me burn.”

Marie seems to enjoy his suffering, and watches from the sidelines as he eats himself up over her. Paparazzi love the drama of BC’s second Casanova chasing down the pretty model and interpret it all wrongly, like a crowd around a fight that started 5 minutes ago. Fans watched him slide off the podium but not before screaming the lyrics that were inspired by her. Others observe nothing but a burning corpse wrapped in a handsome package.

“And I don’t want to die. No, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.” Though the original song views it in a more literal sense, I view it metaphorically. Jerome is speaking to his old self, how he used to be. He sees this new persona rise and seep into his regular routine, stomping down the caring and loving soul that resided back in France. But he doesn’t want it to die. Somewhere in the back of his mind he doesn’t want to loose himself even if it looks like he so desperately tries to, even if he tried to back in the day. He can’t kill it. He doesn’t want to kill it. That side still resides here too, in Seoul, sometimes slipping out when around people but never accidental when with Julien. His old self resides with Julien, genuine smiles lacing his pink lips as he handles everything that is him with the care he deserves. He doesn’t want to loose himself, and it scares him that he found someone that made him think like that. But somewhere in the depths of his mind, he baths in it too.

#Record Player.#Chansons de la vie. { Playlists }#Ma putain. Son amour. { Seo 'Marie' Yumi }#ooc. { 130 mood : CRYING }#{ firstly; yes i'm very emo about jerome all of a sudden don't jUDGE ME. }#{ secondly; yes the girl in the picture is Marie's faceclaim in my mind }#{ third; yes. it'll all be unraveled soon as to how much Marie fucks with Jerome. }#{ fourth; yeah she a bitch. /jerome in the back; A WHORE. me; ok romeo pls calm down }#{ fifth; the quote i used is from xxxtentacions song 'teeth'. }#{ the two last lines from it though. ah. dont read too much into it. for me its all metaphorically. }

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ts1989fanatic · 7 years ago

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All 115 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked

From teenage country tracks to synth-pop anthems and little-known covers, a comprehensive assessment and celebration of Swift's one-of-a-kind songbook

Taylor Swift the celebrity is such a magnet for attention, she can distract from Taylor Swift the artist. But Swift was a songwriter before she was a star, and she'll be a songwriter long after she graduates from that racket. It's in her music where she's made her mark on history – as a performer, record-crafter, guitar hero and all-around pop mastermind, with songs that can leave you breathless, or with a nasty scar. She was soaring on the level of the all-time greats before she was old enough to rent a car, with the crafty guile of a Carole King and the reckless heart of a Paul Westerberg – and she hasn't exactly slowed down since then.

So with all due respect to Taylor the myth, the icon, the red-carpet tabloid staple, let's celebrate the realTaylor – the songwriter she was born to be. Let's break it down: all 115 tunes, counted from the bottom to the top. The hits, the flops, the deep cuts, the covers, from her raw 2006 debut as a teen country ingénue to "...Ready for It?" – her latest offering. Every fan would compile a different list – that's the beauty of it. But they're not ranked by popularity, sales or supposed celebrity quotient – just the level of Taylor genius on display, from the perspective of a fan who generally does not give a rat's nads who the songs are "really" about. All that matters is whether they're about you and me. (I guarantee you are a more fascinating human than the Twilight guy, though I'm probably not.)

Sister Tay may be the last true rock star on the planet, making brilliant moves (or catastrophic gaffes, because that's what rock stars do). These are the songs that sum up her wit, her empathy, her flair for emotional excess, her girls-to-the-front bravado, her urge to ransack every corner of pop history, her determination to turn any chorus into a ridiculous spectacle. So let's step back from the image and pay homage to her one-of-a-kind songbook – because the weirdest and most fascinating thing about Taylor Swift will always be her music.

115. "Bad Blood" (2014)

Melodically parched, lyrically unfinished, rhythmically clunky – this was a mighty strange pick for a single from an album as loaded as 1989. There are a million things Taylor has in common with Paul McCartney – one is that celebrity grievances tend to sound like a penny-ante waste of their time, even when they're totally understandable (unless you're a fan of Macca's "Dear Boy," where John Lennon is his Katy Perry). The single remix is improved by Kendrick Lamar – but he wasn't saving his A-game for this one.

Best line: "Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes."

114. "Santa Baby" (2007)

Yes, she made a Christmas album, which is full of contenders for the basement of this list. But an oldie about a gold digger wooing Little Saint Nick was perhaps a dubious pick for a singer still in her teens.

Best line: "I've been an awful good girl."

113. "A Place in This World" (2006)

Apprentice work from the debut, when she was still learning the ropes as a country songwriter. Yet, the seeds of greatness are already there. Historical significance: This was the song where Tay discovered rain imagery, which in her hands was the equivalent of Sir Isaac Newton inventing calculus.

Best line: "I'll be strong/I'll be wrong/But life goes on."

112. "Christmas Must Be Something More" (2007)

A hymn about how Jesus is the reason for the season, with the hook, "So here's to the birthday boy who saved our lives." Unlike most boys Swift sings about, Jesus didn't comment publicly.

Best line: "What would happen if God never let it snow?"

111. "I'm Only Me When I'm With You" (2006)

Could there be a less Swiftian sentiment? For better or worse, this girl is always herself. That's kinda the point.

Best line: "I'm only up when you're not down/Don't wanna fly if you're still on the ground."

110. "Two Is Better Than One" With Boys Like Girls (2009)

A long, long, very long duet with former Good Charlotte and Fall Out Boy tourmates Boys Like Girls, who are either from London or Nashville (they seem to switch accents at random).

Best line: "You already got me coming…undone."

109. "Out of the Woods" (2014)

Taylor loves to sing about boyfriends who are terrible drivers, but this guy takes the prize – he crashes her snowmobile and gets 20 stitches in the hospital. Call a cab, girl.

Best line: "Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying."

108. "Silent Night" (2007)

This bizarre version manages to miss almost every single note in the melody. They sure were in a rush to get this Christmas album out.

Best line: "Shepherds quake at the sight."

107. "Both of Us" With B.o.B (2012)

Nice try at remaking "Airplanes," but that Hayley Williams lightning does not strike twice.

Best line: "Your money's all gone, and you lose your whip."

106. "The Last Time" With Gary Lightbody (2012)

Her duet with the guy from Snow Patrol. Unfortunately, their voices don't mesh at all – what, is he auditioning for a Spandau Ballet tribute band? The funny moment is the très Eighties synth-horn blurp at the three-minute mark.

Best line: "This is the last time I'm asking you this/Put my name at the top of your list."

105. "The Outside" (2006)

Still a rookie, still learning, still trying to get away with "read between the lines" and "the road less traveled by" in the same verse.

Best line: "Nothing ever works the first few times/Am I right?"

104. "Girl at Home" (2012)

A perfunctory cheating-is-bad homily, with barely any chorus.

Best line: "I feel a responsibility/To do what's upstanding and right."

103. "Come in With the Rain" (2008)

She leaves her window open overnight, just in case her ex falls out of a cloud. There's a great "oooh" in the second chorus – one of those moments you can tell she's an Oasis fan. (This song makes you suspect "Don't Look Back In Anger" is a fave.)

Best line: "I could stand up and write you a song/But I don't wanna have to go that far."

102. "Half of My Heart" With John Mayer (2009)

The real prize from his Battle Studies album is "Heartbreak Warfare"; this is lesser J.M., with an underexploited T.S. cameo and an increasingly irritating premise of hearts having fingers, which they don't. No wonder the girl in the dress cried the whole way home.

Best line: "Half of my heart's got a grip on the situation."

101. "The Other Side of the Door" (2008)

Again with the slamming doors. Tay Tay – even the great songwriters can get away with exactly one slamming door per career. And just to be on the safe side, she throws in pouring rain, photo albums, a little black dress (which rhymes with "mess" and "confess"), a guy throwing pebbles at her window….In other words, this would be the ultimate Swift song – except there are a hundred better ones.

Best line: "Me and my stupid pride, sitting here alone/Going through the photographs, staring at the phone."

100. "Superman" (2010)

A Lois Lane fantasy, left off Speak Now for good reason.

Best line: "Tall dark and beautiful/He's complicated, he's so irrational."

99. "Cold as You" (2006)

"I start a fight because I need to feel something" – give her credit for honesty, even in this raw phase.

Best line: "Oh, every smile you fake is so condescending."

98. "If This Was a Movie" (2010)

"Good evening, sir. May I help you? You're a guy in a Taylor Swift song who wants to stand outside the window in the pouring rain, begging the love of your life to forgive your sorry ass? Take a number and get in line. No, that line."

Best line: "But I take it all back now!"

97. "Sweeter Than Fiction" (2013)

A warm-up for the synth-pop of 1989, from the One Chancesoundtrack.

Best line: "What a sight when the light came on."

96. "A Perfectly Good Heart" (2006)

"It's not unbroken anymore"? Paging the eminent cardiologist Dr. Toni Braxton.

Best line: "Why would you wanna make the very first scar?/Why would you wanna break a perfectly good heart?"

95. "White Christmas" (2007)

Unlike "Silent Night," this was a yuletide carol she could handle, with a straight-down-the-middle country rendition.

Best line: "Where the treetops glisten."

94. "Never Grow Up" (2010)

A folksy fingerpicking change of pace on Speak Now, pining for childhood innocence – though it feels more like a leftover from the debut.

Best line: "You're mortified your mom's dropping you off."

93. "I Don’t Wanna Live Forever" With Zayn Malik (2016)

Neither she nor Zayn sound deeply interested in this dueling-falsettos battle from the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. Maybe it works in the movie, but who wants to go find out? Really, they sound like two ghosts standing in the place of…sorry, sore subject, let's drop it.

Best line: "I've been feeling sad in all the nicest places."

92. "You Are in Love" (2014)

One of her through-the-years romances, this one featuring a snow globe.

Best line: "For once you let go of your fears and your ghosts."

91. "Mary's Song (Oh My My)" (2006)

Another through-the-years romance, but with a sweet homespun touch.

Best line: "I'll be 87, you'll be 89/I'll still look at you like the stars that shine in the sky."

90. "Highway Don't Care" With Tim McGraw and Keith Urban (2013)

A duet from McGraw's album Two Lanes of Freedom, with a guitar solo from Keith Urban. The plot: His ex is driving away, listening to a Taylor song on the radio, as Tay tries to coax the woman into turning the car around and going home. Perhaps McGraw's finest duet since his great lost Nelly jam, "Over & Over."

Best line: "I bet you're bending God's ear talking 'bout me."

89. "Change" (2008)

Oh, the fall of 2008 – Chuck and Blair were still an item, Suede was killing it on Project Runway, and "Change" was a de facto victory song for Obama, complete with a thumbs-up for "the revolution." Yeah, those were different times.

Best line: "These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down."

88. "Nashville" (2010)

A cover of an obscurity by country singer David Mead, tucked away as a bonus on the Target edition of the Speak Now Tour Live DVD.

Best line: "Was that a blood or wine stain on your wedding dress?"

87. "The Sweet Escape" (2010)

From the same live DVD, a remake of the Gwen Stefani solo hit. Taylor's vocal sure fits the Gwen just-a-girl sensibility.

Best line: "I must apologize for acting stank."

86. "Look What You Made Me Do" (2017)

The reason fans once cared about rap beefs: They inspired great songs, whether it was Queens vs. the Bronx ("The Bridge" vs. "The Bridge Is Over" vs. "Have a Nice Day") or LL Cool J vs. Kool Moe Dee ("How Ya Like Me Now" vs. "Jack the Ripper" vs. "Let's Go" vs. "To Da Break of Dawn"). But this just sounds like a trivial time-waster by her standards – Swift's celebrity feuds are not really one of the hundred most interesting things about her. The main attraction here is the retro Panic! at the Disco vibe. Here's hoping it gets outshined by the rest of Reputation, the way "Shake It Off" was instantly eclipsed by the rest of 1989.

Best line: "It's much better to face these kinds of things with a sense of poise and rationality." Oh wait – that actually is Panic! at the Disco.

85. "Stay Beautiful" (2006)

An early stab at a take-the-high-road breakup song.

Best line: "He whispers songs into my window."

84. "I Want You Back" (2010)

A live acoustic tribute to the then-recently departed Michael Jackson, with a bit of Motown tremble in her voice.

Best line: "Now it's much too late for me to take a second look."

83. "The Way I Loved You" (2008)

She meets a low-stress boy who doesn't want love to be torture. Alas, this suitor is toast, because he reminds her how much she misses the manic pixie drama vampire she dated before. Sorry, dude – she loves the players, and she loves the game.

Best line: "He respects my space/And never makes me wait."

82. "Thug Story" With T-Pain (2009)

The classic T-Pain and Taylor duet from the 2009 CMT Awards, still T-Swizzle's finest rap performance.

Best line: "No, I never really been in a club/Still live with my parents, but I'm still a thug/I'm so gangsta you can find me baking cookies at night/You out clubbing, but I just made caramel delight."

81. "I Wish You Would" (2014)

One of her many, many songs set at 2 a.m. – clearly the most inspiring hour on Swift Standard Time – with a staccato disco guitar lick.

Best line: "We were a crooked love in a straight line down."

80. "Umbrella" (2008)

The Rihanna hit, briefly covered on the Live in SoHo digital album. Her finest Ri tribute remains her 2011 version of "Live Your Life" with T.I. onstage in Atlanta – sadly unreleased, but a duet that deserves to be enshrined for the ages.

Best line: "Stand under my umbrella, ella, ella."

79. "I Heart ?" (2008)

The trad country sound she soon left behind, from her Beautiful EyesEP.

Best line: "Wake up, and smell the breakup/Fix my heart, put on my makeup."

78. "Breathe" (With Colbie Caillat) (2008)

A gorgeous duet full of low-key nuances – her humming after the first verse, that "sorry, sorry, sorry" fade, the way Colbie's voice lifts hers.

Best line: "It's tragedy, and it'll only bring you down."

77. "The Moment I Knew" (2012)

A somber piano ballad about getting stood up on your 21st birthday.

Best line: "There in the bathroom/I try not to fall apart."

76. "Untouchable" (2008)

A rare case where she retools somebody else's song on one of her proper albums – the all-but-unknown Y2K-era rock band Luna Halo, who went on to open for Hoobastank. Her Fearless version sounds practically nothing like their original (though both name-check .38 Special's Eighties classic "Caught Up in You"). In fact, it's tough to fathom how she heard the original as raw material she could use – now that's ears.

Best line: "In the middle of the night when I'm in this dream/It's like a million little stars spelling out your name."

75. "Pour Some Sugar On Me" With Def Leppard (2008)

She makes a daring leap into the hair-metal mom market by teaming up with Def Leppard on CMT Crossroads, a move that works almost frighteningly well. Peak glam, especially when she asks the gender-torching question, "Demolition woman, can I be your man?"

Best line: "Do you take sugar? One lump or two?"

74. "Christmases When You Were Mine" (2007)

Taylor writes her own ace lovelorn holiday standard, ambushing her ex with one of those squirm-packed Merry-Christmas phone calls. Awkward question: "When you were putting up the lights this year/Did you notice one less pair of hands?" Eat your heart out, Mariah.

Best line: "I bet you got your mom another sweater."

73. "American Girl" (2009)

A bang-up claim on the Tom Petty classic – she used his original as her live entrance music for a while. Then she switched to Lenny Kravitz's "American Woman."

Best line: "Oh yeah! All right!"

72. "Invisible" (2006)

A teen ditty about a boy who doesn't realize she's alive, from pretty much the last moment in history that was possible. Clever pop-obsessive touch: The final steel-guitar twang echoes Elton John's "Rocket Man." If you think that's an accident…this is Planet Tay. There are no accidents.

Best line: "We could be a beautiful miracle, unbelievable, instead of just invisible."

71. "Jump Then Fall" (2008)

Ironclad rule of pop music: Songs about jumping are never a bad idea. Dig that "listens to Sublime once" vocal.

Best line: "I watch you talk, you didn't notice."

70. "Breathless" (2010)

Digging deep in the Nineties modern-rock crates, she does right by a previously obscure (to me) nugget from the New Orleans band Better Than Ezra – from 2005!, 10 years after their MTV hit! – as a charity benefit for the Hope for Haiti Now album.

Best line: "I'll never judge you/I can only love you."

69. "Superstar" (2008)

"You smile that beautiful smile, and all the girls in the front row scream your name." No relation to the 1970s Leon Russell ballad immortalized by the Carpenters – except they're both poignant ballads about groupies crushing on distant guitar boys. Well, as Journey warned, lovin' a music man ain't always what it's supposed to be.

Best line: "You sing me to sleep every night from the radio."

68. "Crazier" (2009)

Her ballad from Hannah Montana: The Movie, snagging her a cameo in the film. (But the highlight of the soundtrack will always be "Hoedown Throwdown.") This is where Taylor and Miley crossed light sabers – although they'd meet again. Great title, too – even Taylor might probably admit Miley had her beat in this department, at least until the "Blank Space" video.

Best line: "Every sky was your own kind of blue."

67. "Innocent" (2010)

Little-known fact: Did you know Kanye West once went onstage to interrupt Swift's acceptance speech at the VMAs and threw a misogynist tantrum about how she didn't deserve an award? Strange but true! "Innocent" was her song publicly forgiving him – seven freaking years ago – then they both released brilliant albums, and we all moved on with our lives. Dear Lord, if only this story had ended there.

Best line: "It's okay/Life is a tough crowd."

66. "Come Back…Be Here" (2012)

A yearning prayer for a rock & roll boy on tour, weak in the knees as she pleads for him to jet back on any terms he chooses.

Best line: "I guess you're in London today."

65. "Tied Together With a Smile" (2006)

An unsung highlight of the debut – a teen pep talk about self-esteem.

Best line: "Seems the only one who doesn't see your beauty/Is the face in the mirror looking back at you."

64. "Last Christmas" (2007)

Tay does the Wham! legacy proud – she should have also covered "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." The ache and quaver of her voice fit the George Michael melancholy; this might be the saddest "Last Christmas" since the original. Plenty of us communed with this version last Christmas, the night we said goodbye to the guy who wrote it. R.I.P., George Michael.

Best line: "A girl on a cover, but you tore her apart."

63. "Tell Me Why" (2008)

From Neil Young to the Beatles, "Tell Me Why" songs are tough to screw up, and even at 19, Tay's too seasoned to let that happen.

Best line: "I need you like a heartbeat/But you know you got a mean streak."

62. "Beautiful Eyes" (2008)

If you're a fan of Swift's Nineties modern-rock radio jones – one of her most fruitful long-running obsessions – check out this shameless tribute to the Cranberries. (But did she have to let it linger? Did she have to? Did she have to?)

Best line: "Baby, make me fly."

61. "Everything Has Changed" (2012)

She and Ed Sheeran wrote this duet together in her backyard while bouncing on a trampoline, because of course they did.

Best line: "All I've seen since 18 hours ago is green eyes and freckles and your smile."

60. "Love Story" (2008)

Romeo meets Juliet: proof that star-crossed teen romances never go out of style. She's kept going back to the well of Shakespearean tragedy, quoting Julius Caesar in the "Look What You Made Me Do" video. It's never been clear what the line "I was a scarlet letter" is doing in this song, but now it's a hint that Tay was just a few years away from going full Hester Prynne in "New Romantics."

Best line: "Just say yes."

59. "Speak Now" (2010)

In real-life weddings, the preacher hardly ever invites the groom's ex up to interrupt the ceremony. But if you're a fan of Tay in stalker mode, this is priceless – crouching behind the curtains in the back of the church, waiting to pounce. "Horrified looks from everyone in the room" – you don't say.

Best line: "It seems I was uninvited by your lovely bride-to-be."

58. "Shake It Off" (2014)

A clever transitional single – great verses, grating chorus, pithy lyrics with a shout-out to her obvious inspiration, Robyn's "Dancing on My Own." As a lead single, "Shake It Off" might have seemed meager after 1989 came out – she was holding back "Blank Space" and "Style" and (Lord have mercy) "New Romantics" for this? But "Shake It Off" got the job done, serving as a trailer to announce her daring Eighties synth-pop makeover.

Best line: "It's like I got this music in my head, saying it's gonna be all right."

57. "Better Than Revenge" (2010)

One of the basic rules of stardom is "never punch down" – don't go after somebody one-thousandth as famous as you – but rules were made to be broken, and Taylor is the girl made to break them. Here, she goes Bruce Lee on a sexual rival who may or may not be the actress who had Alyssa Milano as her babysitter in the erotic thriller Poison Ivy 2. But as usual with Swift, her self-owns are the funniest part of the song.

Best line: "She thinks I'm psycho because I like to rhyme her name with things."

56. "Welcome to New York" (2014)

People sure do love to complain about this song – in fact, the most authentically New York thing about it is how it sends people into spasms of mouth-foaming outrage. An explicitly queer-positive disco ode to arrivistes stepping out in the city that invented disco – "You can want who you want, boys and boys and girls and girls" – that will be bugging the crap out of you in rom-coms for years to come. (It made me throw a napkin at my in-flight screen during How to Be Single, when Dakota Johnson's cab is going the wrong way on the Brooklyn Bridge – and I love this song.) Bumped up a few bonus notches for pissing everyone off, since that's one of this girl's superpowers.

Best line: "Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before/And it said welcome to New York."

55. "Drops of Jupiter" (2010)

I mistakenly thought this Train hit was deep-fried garbage until I heard Swift's version and realized, "Hey, she's right – this is the best soy latte I've ever had!" Props to Tay for bringing out the hidden greatness in this song – the stargazing lyrics and her voice go together like Mozart and tae bo. (The astrophysicist in my life would like me to point out that you can't "make it to the Milky Way" because that's the galaxy we already live in. In fact, you couldn't leave the Milky Way if you tried. Science!)

Best line: "Tell me, did Venus blow your mind?"

54. "Haunted" (2010)

Enchanted to meet you, Goth Taylor. We'll meet again.

Best line: "Something keeps me holding on to nothing."

53. "Today Was a Fairy Tale" (2011)

Don't let the title scare you away – it's a plainspoken and genuinely touching play-by-play recap of a worthwhile date. In fact, "Today Was a Fairy Tale" and "If This Was a Movie" should trade titles, since this one feels realer and would make a better movie. It could rank higher, except she hugely improved it when she rewrote it as "Begin Again." (Docked a couple notches for coming from the soundtrack of Valentine's Day, which is the most dog-vomit flick Jessica Alba has ever made, and I say that as someone who paid money to see The Love Guru.)

Best line: "I wore a dress/You wore a dark gray T-shirt."

52. "All You Had to Do Was Stay" (2014)

A 1989 banger that could have made an excellent single – it sounds a bit like "Out of the Woods," except with a livelier chorus and a stormier range of electro-Tay sound effects.

Best line: "Let me remind you that this was what you wanted."

51. "Eyes Open" (2012)

Finally, her long-overdue metal move, from The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond.

Best line: "Every lesson forms a new scar."

50. "Treacherous" (2012)

"Put your lips next to mine/As long as they don't touch" – now there's an entrance line. Taylor braves the ski slopes of love, with a seething acoustic guitar that finally detonates halfway though.

Best line: "Nothing safe is worth the drive."

49. "You Belong With Me" (2008)

One of her most pop-friendly early hits, singing in the role of a high school geek crushing on her best guy friend. When he comes out in college, they'll have a few laughs about this. (And never let us forget the wisdom of Alicia Silverstone in Clueless: "Searching for a boy in high school is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie."

Best line: "She wears high heels, I wear sneakers/She's cheer captain, and I'm on the bleachers."

48. "I Almost Do" (2012)

A Red slow jam that could have worked even better sped up into a punked-out rocker – though it's plenty affecting as is.

Best line: "Every time I don't, I almost do."

47. "...Ready for It?" (2017)

If by "it" you mean "literally any song that isn't 'Look What You Made Me Do,'" the answer is "extremely ready." A major rebound from her previous release, a week earlier – the chorus of this one actually sounds like a Swift song, with a little air in the mix, giving the room she needs to pull off her intricate breathy effects. Max Martin knows how to shape a production around her voice. A hopeful omen for the rest of Repu TAY shun (hey, I just got that).

Best line: "You can be my jailor/Burton to my Taylor."

46. "Stay Stay Stay" (2012)

"Before you, I only dated self-indulgent takers" – but here she turns into a self-indulgent taker herself and (surprise!) she likes it, a phone-throwing nightmare dressed like a grocery-shopping daydream. She finally meets a guy who can roll with her mood swings – even if she's more in love with the mood swings than with the guy.

Best line: "You came in wearing a football helmet and said, 'Okay, let's talk.'"

45. "Safe and Sound" (2012)

She ventures into rootsy folkie territory on the Hunger Gamessoundtrack, teaming up with the Civil Wars and producer T Bone Burnett, exploring crevices of her voice she hadn't opened up before. Everyone steps out of their comfort zone, and it works. The Swift-Burnett connection raises the question of how long it'll take her to collaborate with Elvis Costello, a songwriter with whom she shares some fascinating affinities. At the very least, Tay should cover "New Lace Sleeves."

Best line: "Don't you dare look out your window, darling/Everything's on fire."

44. "Ronan" (2012)

A little-known charity single for cancer research, unlike anything else in her songbook. She wrote this about Ronan Thompson, a four-year-old Arizona boy who died of neuroblastoma, after she read his mom's blog. She turned the blog entries into a disarmingly eloquent ballad (crediting Maya Thompson as co-writer) and performed "Ronan" at the Stand Up to Cancer benefit. You might expect it to be manipulative and obvious; it isn't.

Best line: "We had our own secret club."

43. "You're Not Sorry" (2008)

A dramatic piano-and-strings ballad from Fearless, showing off how much her voice has deepened between her first two albums.

Best line: "It's taken me this long, baby, but I figured you out."

42. "I Know Places" (2014)

She goes all Kate Bush, pursued across the moors by the hounds of love. This 1989 deep cut is underrated, but count on "I Know Places" to loom large in her canon over the years.

Best line: "My love, they are the hunters, we are the foxes."

41. "Bette Davis Eyes" (2010)

Her kickiest left-field cover, from Speak Now Live. "I'd love to play you some music that I'm a fan of that's come from L.A. – is that OK?" she asks the West Coast crowd, strumming her guitar. "This one came out in 1981 – eight years before I was born!" Virtually nobody seems to recognize it or sing along. Kim Carnes hit Number One with "Bette Davis Eyes," but it was written by the great Jackie DeShannon, the only songwriter to collaborate with both Randy Newman and Jimmy Page. (Page wrote "Tangerine" for DeShannon!) The fact that Swift loves this classic ode to romantic espionage explains a lot.

Best line: "She's pure as New York snow/She's got Bette Davis eyes."

40. "Wonderland" (2014)

Why did it take her five albums to get to Alice in Wonderland? Needless to say, Taylor Alison Swift fits right in on the other side of the looking glass, with white rabbits and Cheshire cats. Feed your head!

Best line: "It's all fun and games till someone loses their mind."

39. "The Lucky One" (2012)

She's so lucky, she's a star. For the record, T.S. did cover "Lucky" live once (and damn well, too), as a Britney tribute in Louisiana back in 2011.

Best line: "It's big black cars and Riviera views/And your lover in the foyer doesn't even know you."

38. "Wildest Dreams" (2014)

You rang, Goth Taylor? At first this might have seemed like a minor pleasure on 1989, but it really sounds stronger and stronger over the years, especially when she hiccups the words "my last request ih-ih-is." The video features giraffes and zebras.

Best line: "He's so tall and handsome as hell/He's so bad, but he does it so well."

37. "White Horse" (2008)

Teen Romantic Tay meets Bitter Adult Tay in a superbly disenchanted breakup ballad that gives up on princesses and fairy tales.

Best line: "I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet/Lead up the stairwell."

36. "Starlight" (2012)

"Oh my, what a marvelous tune" seems like a dauntingly quaint chorus, yet she makes it stick, in what sounds like an F. Scott Fitzgerald-themed whirlwind romance. That hook comes straight from the AC/DC playbook (specifically, the opening lines of "You Shook Me All Night Long") – the sign of a truly sick pop scholar.

Best line: "We snuck into a yacht-club party/Pretending to be a duchess and a prince."

35. "Picture to Burn" (2006)

The dawn of Petty AF Tay, as she serves her ex beatdown threats. Every boy who ever complained when Taylor wrote about him – this is where you officially got fair warning.

Best line: "Let me strike a match on all my wasted time."

34. "Forever and Always" (2008)

She added this to Fearless at the last minute – just what the album needed. It's a blast of high-energy JoBro-baiting aggro on her most anomalously shade-free album. "It rains in your bedroom" is a very on-brand Tay predicament.

Best line: "Did I say something too honest? Made you run and hide like a scared little boy?"

33. "Back to December" (2010)

One of the rare ballads where she goes crawling back to an ex she treated like dirt – and she's surprisingly effective in the role. Although breaking into the guy's house is a little extreme. (If she's blocked by the chain on his door, that means she already picked the lock, right?) And sorry, but you're seriously dreaming if you think I'm bothering to Google the name of that Twilight guy, don't @ me.

Best line: "It turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you."

32. "The Best Day" (2008)

Her tribute to Mama Swift. A weapons-grade tearjerker and not to be trifled with in a public place. NSFW, unless you are a professional crier.

Best line: "You were on my side/Even when I was wrong."

31. "The Story of Us" (2010)

You could credit this hit with single-handedly driving John Mayer out of the pop heartthrob business and into the Grateful Dead – which is just one of the things to love about it. Along with the Joey Ramone-style way she says, "Next chapter!"

Best line: "See me nervously pulling at my clothes and trying to look busy."

30. "How You Get the Girl" (2014)

She busts out her trusty acoustic guitar, teardrop stains and all, just to turn it into a beatbox.

Best line: "Stand there like a ghost shaking in the rain/She'll open up the door and say 'Are you insane?'"

29. "Hey Stephen" (2010)

Loaded with classic girl-group flourishes, right from the opening "Be My Baby" drum beat. Plus, it begins and ends with her finest humming solos. If she wanted to hum on every song, she could make that work.

Best line: "All those other girls, well, they're beautiful/But would they write a song for you?"

28. "Should've Said No" (2006)

A pissed-off highlight of the debut, with an Oasis-worthy chorus. Savor the perfect Liam Gallagher way she milks the vowels of "begging for forgiveness at my fee-ee-eet."

Best line: "It was a moment of weakness, and you said yes."

27. "Last Kiss" (2010)

Toward the end of Speak Now, when you're already wrung out from sad songs and begging for mercy, this six-minute quasi-doo-wop ballad creeps up on you to inflict more punishment. One of those flawless Nathan Chapman productions – so sparse, so delicate, flattering every tremor of her voice.

Best line: "I'm not much for dancing, but for you I did."

26. "Teardrops on My Guitar" (2006)

One of her defining early smashes – and the one that marked her crucial crossover to the minivan-mom adult audience, where country stars do most of their business. It also inspired the first anti-Taylor answer song – Joe Jonas sang, "I'm done with superstars/And all the tears on her guitar" in 2009, on the JoBros' instantly forgotten Lines, Vines and Trying Times.

Best line: "Drew walks by me/Can he tell that I can't breathe?"

25. "Sad Beautiful Tragic" (2012)

She must have heard a Mazzy Star song on the radio that morning and thought, "Hey, this sounds like fun." All the details are in place, from her woozy Hope Sandoval mumble to the way Nathan Chapman nails Sandoval's exact tambourine sound. Such an underrated Red gem, one she's almost never done live. Would any other songwriter on Earth have the sheer gall to get away with that title? Let's hope nobody tries.

Best line: "You've got your demons, and, darling, they all look like me."

24. "Mine" (2010)

"You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter" is one of those hooks where she seems to cram a whole life story into one line.

Best line: "I was a flight risk with a fear of falling."

23. "This Love" (2014)

A meditative 1989 nocturne – half acoustic introspection, half electro reverie – as she genuflects in the midnight hour.

Best line: "I could go on and on/And I will."

22. "22" (2012)

Approximately 22,000 times more fun than actually being 22. The best song about turning the double deuce since Neil Young's "Powderfinger," if not the Stratford 4's "Telephone," it's also her first shameless disco trip, with that Nile Rodgers-style guitar flash. But the power move is that "uh oh" into the chorus – the oldest trick in the book, except she makes it sound brand new every time.

Best line: "This place is too crowded, too many cool kids."

21. "Mean" (2010)

A banjo-core Tay-visceration of people who are mean, liars, pathetic, and/or alone in life, including the ones who live in big old cities. Always a concert highlight, showcasing her murderers' row of a band, the Agency.

Best line: "Drunk and grumbling on about how I can't sing."

20. "I Knew You Were Trouble" (2012)

It slams like a lost Blondie hit, from somewhere between Parallel Lines and Eat to the Beat. The way she sings the word "drown-i-i-i-ing" alone makes it.

Best line: "He was long gone when he met me/And I realize the joke is on me."

19. "Tim McGraw" (2006)

We knew she was trouble when she walked in – or at least we should have guessed from her debut single. You couldn't make this up – a nervy high school kid shows up with a country ballad she whipped together after math class one day, about slow dancing in the moonlight to the pickup truck radio: "When you think Tim McGraw/I hope you think of me." Within a couple of years, she's an even bigger star than McGraw is.

Best line: "He said the way my blue eyes shined/Put those Georgia pines to shame that night/I said, 'That's a lie.'"

18. "Style" (2014)

Not always a subtle one, our Tay. This extremely 1986-sounding synth-pop groove is full of hushed-breath melodrama, where even the guy taking off his coat can feel like a plot twist. (Why would he keep his coat on? This is his apartment.) And the long-running songwriting badminton between her and Harry Allegedly is pop call-and-response the way it ought to be – no matter how much misery it might bring into their personal lives, for the rest of us it means one great tune after another. (Yeah, OK, plus the one about the snowmobile.)

Best line: "You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye/And I got that red lip classic thing that you like."

17. "State of Grace" (2012)

She opens Red with one of her grandest love songs in arena-rock drag, and the U2 vibe makes sense since she's also got a red guitar and the truth. If "State of Grace" is her U2 song, what's the U2 song that sounds most like Taylor? Probably "All I Want Is You," though you could make a strong case for "A Sort of Homecoming."

Best line: "Up in your room and our slates are clean/Twin fire signs, four blue eyes."

16. "Sparks Fly" (2010)

"Drop everything now! Meet me in the pouring rain!" Oh, this girl loves her precipitation scenes, but "Sparks Fly" really brings the thunder. It shows off her uncanny power to make a moment sound gauchely private and messily public at the same time. (The new Waxahatchee album has another excellent song called "Sparks Fly" – no relation.)

Best line: "Just keep on keeping your eyes on me."

15. "Fifteen" (2008)

"In your life you'll do bigger things than date the boy on the football team/I didn't know that at 15." Still south of her twenties, she sings her compassionately, sisterly yet hardass advice to her fellow teenage girls. (Spoiler: Boys are always lying about everything.)

Best line: "We both cried."

14. "Ours" (2010)

Like so many of her songs, "Ours" sounds like it could be channeling the 16-blue mojo of the Replacements' punk-rock bard Paul Westerberg. (Melodically, it evokes "When It Began," though it feels more like "I Will Dare.") Especially the best line, which is possibly the best-est "best line" on this list, and which I sing to myself a mere dozen times a day.

Best line: "Don't you worry your pretty little mind/People throw rocks at things that shine."

13. "Begin Again" (2012)

"You said you never met one girl who had as many James Taylor records as you," indeed. Sweet Baby Tay drops a deceptively simple ballad that sneaks up and steamrolls all over you, as an unmelodramatic coffee date leads to an unmelodramatic emotional connection. She's always been outspoken about her mad love for her namesake JT and Carly Simon, but "Begin Again" could be the finest collabo they never wrote.

Best line: "You don't know why I'm coming off a little shy/But I do."

12. "Fearless" (2008)

Oh, Fearless, it's easy to take you for granted sometimes. The first time I heard her sophomore record (the record company literally played it over the phone for me because they were so afraid of it leaking) I thought, "Holy cats, this is a perfect pop album. She'll never top this." Then she topped it three times in a row, to the point where it's one of history's most curiously overlooked perfect pop albums. The title anthem gathers so many of her favorite tropes in one chorus – rain, cars, fancy dresses, boys who stare at her while driving instead of watching the damn road, shy girls posing as brave and faking it till they make it – and builds up to a swoon.

Best line: "You're so cool, run your hands through your hair/Absent-mindedly making me want you."

11. "Enchanted" (2010)

The moment where this bittersweet symphony leaps from a nine to a 10 comes at the 4:25 point, when it feels like the song has reached its logical conclusion, until the Interior Monologue Voice-Over Taylor beams in to whisper: "Please don't be in love with someone else/Please don't have somebody waiting on you." In the final seconds, for the coup de grace, she duets with herself.

Best line: "The lingering question kept me up at 2 a.m./Who do you love?"

10. "Our Song" (2006)

The hit that made me a Swift fan, the first moment I heard it in 2007 – it knocked me sideways in the middle of lunch. (The CW played it as interstitial music between afternoon reruns of the Clueless sitcom and What I Like About You.) "Our song is a slamming screen door," what a genius hook. I Googled to see who wrote this; it turned out the songwriter was also the singer and – how strange – she was just starting out. I hoped she might have at least another great tune or two in her. This song and that voice have kept slamming those screen doors ever since.

Best line: "We're on the phone, and you talk reeeeeal slow/'Cause it's late and your mama don't know."

9. "Red" (2012)

The mission statement for Red, this century's most ridiculously masterful megapop manifesto. Eurodisco plus banjos – the glitter-cowgirl totality Shania Twain spent years trying to perfect, with a color-tripping lyric worthy of Prince himself, faster than the wind, passionate as sin. Plus, her all-time gnarliest pileup of Swiftian metaphors. (Nitpick: What kind of crossword puzzle has no right answer? What self-respecting puzzlemaster would sign off on that?)

Best line: "Lovin' him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street."

8. "Clean" (2014)

Love is the drug. "Clean" is the stark synth-folk ballad of an infatuation junkie struggling through some kind of detox, with a big assist from Imogen Heap. An intense finale for the all-killer homestretch of 1989.

Best line: "Ten months sober, I must admit/Just because you're clean don't mean you don't miss it."

7. "Holy Ground" (2012)

Nobody does zero-to-60 emotional peel outs like our girl, and "Holy Ground" is her equivalent of Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon. Note the sly brilliance of how she steals that Eighties guitar riff from none other than Billy Idol, making this her "White Wedding" as well as her "Rebel Yell." (Though the lyrics are about dancing with herself.) A highlight on the Red tour, showcasing Tay's drum-solo skills.

Best line: "Hey, you skip the conversation when you already know."

6. "Dear John" (2010)

A slow-burning, methodical, precise, savage dissection of a failed quasi-relationship, with no happy ending, no moral, no solution, not even a lesson learned – just a bad memory filed away. "Dear John" might sound like she's spontaneously pouring her heart out, but it takes one devious operator to make a song this intricate feel that way. ("You're an expert at sorry and keeping lines blurry and never impressed by me acing your tests" – she makes all that seem like one gulp of breath.) Every line stings, right down to the end when she switches from "I should have known" to "You should have known."

Best line: "I'm shining like fireworks over your sad empty town."

5. "We Are Never Getting Back Together" (2012)

Like, ever. Her funniest breakup jam, because it's her most self-mocking. She could have made the guy in this song a shady creep—a cheater, a liar, a scarf-stealer, etc. But, no, he's just a needy little run-of-the-mill basket case, exactly like her, making the same complaints about her to his own bored friends, though his complaints can't be as catchy as this chorus. And the video is a gem, especially when she's wearing the Tay Is Seriously Mad Now glasses. Where is that indie-rock bar that still has a pay phone?

Best line: "I mean, I'm just like, this is exhausting, OK?

4. "Blank Space" (2014)

A double-venti celebration of serial monogamy for Starbucks lovers everywhere, as Tay zooms through the whole cycle – the high, the pain, the players, the game, magic, madness, heaven, sin. Every second of "Blank Space" is perfect, from the pen clicks to the "nasss-taaaay-scarrr" at the end. The high might not be worth the pain, but this song is.

Best line: "Darling, I'm a nightmare dressed like a daydream."

3. "Long Live" (2010)

This is her "Common People," her "Born to Run," her "We Are the Champions." An arena-slaying rock anthem to cap off Speak Now, for an ordinary girl who suddenly gets to feel like she rules the world for a minute or two. "Long Live" could be a gang of friends, a teen couple at the prom, a singer addressing her audience. But like so many songs on Speak Now, her secret prog album, it reaches a point where it feels like it's over and Tay's bringing it in for a landing, except that's when the song gets twice as good. In the final verse, she makes a gigantic mess. (Actual lyric: "Promise me this/That you'll stand by me forever." WTF, girl, you were doing so well there.) Yet that's the moment that puts "Long Live" over the top – a song nobody else could have written, as she rides those power chords home. That's Taylor: always overdoing it, never having one feeling where six would do. Long live.

Best line: "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you."

2. "New Romantics" (2014)

The way Taylor exhales at the end of the line "I'm about to play my ace-aaah" is perhaps the finest moment in the history of human lungs. "New Romantics" is where she takes the Eighties synth-pop concept of 1989 to the bank, with a mirror-ball epiphany that leaves tears of mascara all over the dance floor. She tips her cap to the arty poseurs of the 1980s New Romantic scene – Duran Duran, Adam Ant, the Human League, etc. – yet sounds exactly like her own preposterously emotional self. (One of my weirdest moments of recent years: explaining this song's existence to the guys in Duran Duran.) "New Romantics" is hardly the first time she's sung about crying in the bathroom, but it's the one that makes crying in the bathroom sound like a bold spiritual quest, which (when she sings about it) it is. The punch line: Having written this work of genius, exceeding even the wildest hopes any fan could have dreamed, she left it off the damn album, a very New Romantic thing to do.

Best line: "We show off our different scarlet letters/Trust me, mine is better."

1. "All Too Well" (2012)

So casually cruel in the name of being awesome. This towering ballad is Swift's zenith, building to peak after peak. For "All Too Well," she teams up with her trustiest collaborators – songwriting sensei Liz Rose, producer Nathan Chapman – to spin a tragic tale of doomed love and scarves and autumn leaves and maple lattes. It's full of killer moments: the way she sings "refrigerator," the way she spits out the consonants of "crumpled-up piece of paper," the way she chews up three "all"s in a row. No other song does such a stellar job of showing off her ability to blow up a trivial little detail into a legendary heartache. (That scarf should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, though in a way it already is.) You can schaeden your freude all over the celebrity she reputedly sings about, but on the best day of your life you will never inspire a song as great as "All Too Well." Or write one.

Best line: "Maybe we got lost in translation/Maybe I asked for too much/Maybe this thing was a masterpiece till you tore it all up/Running scared, I was there, I remember it all too well."

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deadcactuswalking · 6 years ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 30th December 2018 - its Christmas ennit

So, there are twelve Christmas songs I need to review and no new arrivals. Hence, I’m not going to take myself too seriously on this one, so be prepared for a more lighthearted, funnier and most importantly shorter episode of REVIEWING THE CHARTS right after the usual. Anyways, the chart is pretty much three quarters Christmas this week (28 holiday songs) – joy. Let’s go into what survived, what suffered and the Top 10.

Top 10

We have a new number-one – for its first week, ten weeks into its chart run, “Sweet but Psycho” by Ava Max has reached the top spot. I’m not necessarily complaining because it’s not a bad song, but it still isn’t very festive.

Now: the holidays, because as soon as I start celebrating New Years and the dawn of 2019, there’s a Christmas avalanche (unfortunately, none by the Avalanches). “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey is up three spots to the runner-up place. This could have gone to number-one, which is insane.

“Last Christmas” by WHAM! is up four spots to number-three.

“Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl is up seven spaces to number-four.

“thank u, next” by Ariana Grande is down two places to number-five.

“Do They Know it’s Christmas?” by Band Aid moves up seven positions to number-six. Blech.

“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” by Michael Bublé is beginning to look a lot more popular as it slides past nine positions all the way up to number-seven.

“One More Sleep” by Leona Lewis proves itself surprisingly well, up eleven spots to number-eight.

Shakin’ Stevens has an identical boost as “Merry Christmas Everyone” travels up to number-nine.

Finally rounding off our top 10, at #10 we have “Step into Christmas” by Elton John, up eight spaces from last week.

Christmas Nonsense

“Driving Home for Christmas” by Chris Rea is up 11 to #11, “I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday” by Wizzard is up 12 to #12, and just to ruin our streak is “Santa Tell Me” by Ariana Grande, moving up ten spaces to #13, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” by Brenda Lee is up five to #16, “Merry Xmas Everybody” by Slade is up 19 to #17, “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band featuring the Harlem Community Choir is up 11 to #18, “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney is up 15 to #20, “We Built This City on Sausage Rolls” (yes, this is a Christmas song) by LadBaby is DOWN 20 spaces from its top-spot debut last week, now at #21 – and that’s it.

What Survived

Really not that much. Outside of the top 10, “Without Me” by Halsey is down nine to #14, “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” by Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus is down nine to #15, “Sunflower” from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse by Post Malone and Swae Lee is down nine to #19, “Rewrite the Stars” by James Arthur and Anne-Marie is down 13 to #25, “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong is somehow UP three spaces to #27, “Lost Without You” by Freya Ridings is down 18 to #32, “Shotgun” by George Ezra is up four to #33, “ZEZE” by Kodak Black featuring Travis Scott and Offset is down 19 to #34 (this is the only rap song on the chart this week, which is crazy considering how big that genre was this year), “Ruin My Life” by Zara Larsson is down 18 to #35, and “Thursday” by Jess Glynne is down a whopping 31 spaces to #40. Now, in the first 600 words or so of this episode, I have name-dropped every single song on the chart right now that is not in any way related to Christmas or the holidays, adding up to a total of about twelve. Why are there so little then? Well, first of all...

What Suffered

Let’s start with songs that aren’t in the top 75 at all. “KIKA” by 6ix9ine featuring Tory Lanez is out from #34 and “when the party’s over” by Billie Eilish is out from #39. These weren’t going to live long anyway. Now, these next songs are ordered by where they are on the top 100 as of this week. “Imagine” by Ariana Grande is out from #8, “A Million Dreams” by P!nk is out from #27, “Baby” by Clean Bandit featuring Luis Fonsi and Marina is out from #25, “Hold My Girl” by George Ezra is out from #32, “Close to Me” by Ellie Goulding, Diplo and Swae Lee is out from #28, “Going Bad” by Meek Mill and Drake is out from #26, “Better” by Khalid is out from #33, “Empty Space” by James Arthur is out from #31 – good!, “Advice” by Cadet and Deno Driz is out from #38 and finally, “Let You Love Me” by Rita Ora is out from #40. Jesus. Now, returning entries.

Returning Entries

#39 – “Baby it’s Cold Outside” – Idina Menzel and Michael Bublé

Written in 1944, the dated lyrics that are perceived as rapey and manipulative have caught some flack in recent years – of course, what do you expect? It’s from 1944, you should be grateful it doesn’t have a reference to minstrel shows. Although the lack of adjustment of the lyrics in recent covers like this one has been concerning because people become more aware, and who else than Adele Dazeem and the definition of non-descript to cover this charming yet problematic classic? I’m kidding, of course, because these two personality vacuums make me sick to my stomach with their dull-as-bricks cover of an already lethargic traditional. Somehow at two minutes and 36 seconds, it’s too long, especially with its static production. I’d like to say mixing is slightly odd too, but that’s probably on purpose, although the skits in between verses are pretty cringeworthy. Next.

#38 – “Lonely this Christmas” – Mud

Speaking of lethargic and boring, how about the exhausting song by Mud? It starts with the a-capella “bom-bom-bom-bom” and I feel that symbolises your life flashing past your eyes right before your slow, gruelling death with surf-rock guitars and the lead singer sounding like he has a gum shield in his mouth but was forced to stand in for Lionel Richie at a Christmas charity event. I’m calling it now – this type of lazy, awfully dreary music is the reason all of our substance-less emo-rap and lo-fi nonsense exists now, and if less Mud means less Juice WRLD and joji, I’m all for removing this song out of the British Xmas music canon. Go away, and take your annoying spoken word sections with you. Next.

#37 – “Underneath the Tree” – Kelly Clarkson

Hey, something that doesn’t suck as much as an alcoholic toddler hidden within fields of cattle. Although this still has barely any build-up so the climax (which is about three seconds in, may I add) feels immensely worthless. Kelly sounds great, as usual, but the instrumentation is quite cluttered when the chorus comes in, meaning like all new Christmas pop songs, it has that overproduced vibe, which is a vibe nobody except Kanye can really work well with. I’m all for maximalist production but once you add a sax solo to about 40 layers of plastic tangentially festive loops, you lose me. The hook is an earworm and a half. Next.

#36 – “Stay Another Day” – East 17

This isn’t a Christmas song. It was number-one at Christmas, and it had snow in the video, but that doesn’t mean it’s a Christmas song. Hence, I refuse to review it. It’s pretty rubbish generic boy-band schlock, anyway, and it’s really bottom-of-the-barrel tier of that genre, so no losses here!

#31 – “White Christmas” – Bing Crosby

This is an absolute classic, with elegant, beautiful strings and some of the sweetest vocals I’ve ever heard laid down from the 50s and 60s crooners of their day. The lyrics are as well-written as Christmas songs really got back then, and for the time, this probably sounded good on records. It sounds pretty awful on streaming, actually, there’s a few vocal clippings that are oddly frequent. Seriously, we need a remastered version of this that isn’t by Michael Bublé. When’s the last time we got a white Christmas anyway? Even Crosby had to wish for it 60 years ago, we basically have to pray the whole 12 months. Next.

#30 – “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” – Jackson 5

Kids shouldn’t be singing, okay? None of them are all that good at it especially when it’s a professional, label-backed recording. Michael Jackson has always sounded pretty awful as a kid, both in and out the Jackson 5, to me at least, in my opinion, and it’s no different here, although I’ll admit he sounds okay in his best moments throughout, and the production has some actual funk and groove behind it, so I’ll always appreciate that (although I definitely do appreciate the painful infant Michael Jackson ad-libs). When I typed in “Santa Claus” into Spotify, the first thing to show up was “I’m Gonna Kill Santa Claus”, so that should tell you how I feel about this type of sickly Christmas music in general. Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnext.

#29 – “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” – Andy Williams

It really isn’t, but as much as I disagree with the politics here, the song’s pretty cool. This is actually remastered so I can appreciate every tidbit, from the bass in Andy Williams’ gorgeous voice, the cute lyrics, the beautiful orchestral instrumentation and the unintentionally lo-fi backing vocals that kind of work as a lower quality in comparison to the rest of the mix because it sounds like a public recording of a chanted vocal in a pub or village or something, like gang vocals in DJ Mustard beats. Why are there ghost stories, though? Was Jack Skellington involved in the making of the song? Either way, this song’s pretty NEXT!

#28 – “Mistletoe”- Justin Bieber

Just because it’s a song that briefly and vaguely references Christmas whilst really being a song about picking up a girl doesn’t mean it’s a Christmas song. I mean, that would imply Lil Wayne’s song about having sex with every girl in the world is a Christmas song, and that’s just wrong.

These hoes is God’s gift like Christmas

Next!

#26 – “Mary’s Boy Child / Oh My Lord” – Boney M.

The women are great but listen, the dude in Boney M. can’t sing, at all, and personally, I don’t like my Christmas songs to be too overly religious. This literally re-tells the birth of Jesus, and for what it’s worth, it’s a decent gospel-disco track although I know a whole album that makes a better combination of urban contemporary music and gospel, in fact, I know two, from the same year and the same people... but seriously that dude’s voice is hilariously pathetic, and his part is just unforgivably horrible and out-of-place. Who told him this was okay? This was the sex icon, I’m pretty sure, of the group, because he was Daddy Cool and all that, but if a man walked up to me with that voice, I’d think he was a child initially and then eventually run away. He scares me with how Godawful (no pun intended) his performance here is... but it’s okay as a whole, I guess. Next.

#24 – “Santa’s Coming for Us” – Sia

Sia tries to do reggae-fusion Christmas and it hurts my ears. This is the only time where Sia’s diction really bothers me because she’s just indecipherable here, and she has nothing to cover her initially except synth noise until the cliché, plastic Christmas beat comes in. Admittedly I like the horns here, but that goes for a lot of these tracks. Sia’s chorus where she just repeats the title until she absolutely mangles the word to the point where it means nothing disgusts me with his repulsing beauty. It’s almost unlistenable, and I’m pretty sure the fake Caribbean inflection deserves this white Australian woman some flack. No? You guys still going to fight the dude in the 1940s who made a song that portrayed gender roles considered more standard at the time, and not the woman who fakes an accent for a worthless Christmas cash-in? Aight then, next.

#23 – “Cozy Little Christmas” – Katy Perry

If you don’t put your music on Spotify and are a big name who is absolutely able to, you are pretentious, irrational and uptight. This song only exists as a single because it was released on Amazon. That’s baffling to me. Next.

#22 – “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” – Darlene Love

Was this in Home Alone? It seems oddly familiar to a song that was definitely in that soundtrack. I don’t know, but this song rocks. The song is oddly desperate despite how it may sound, and I can really dig her longing for days that she had a “true” Christmas because of how she spent it all with her significant other. It’s sweet. Phil Spector’s jolly production shines again with the steady beat (needs a remastered version ASAP) and Darlene Love perfectly riding the instrumental as if she was Santa on his sleigh. Thank you, next.

Conclusion

Oh, wait, that’s all? Thank the Lords. Mud get Worst of the Week for “Lonely this Christmas”, with Dishonourable Mention going to Katy Perry, East 17 and Justin Bieber for all of their worthless cash-ins that I didn’t even bother doing any form of substantial reviews for. Best of the Week goes to Andy Williams, to be honest, for “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, with Honourable Mention going to no-one. Happy Easter.

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tragicbooks · 8 years ago

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5 bizarre features of American politics that shock people when they first hear about them.

...including one reason people are staying involved despite it all.

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Tuning in to American politics for the first time in 2017 is a lot like drinking from a firehose while fighting a grizzly bear and trying to summarize the plot of "Inception" from memory.

Photos by: Win McNamee/Getty Images (Paul Ryan), Justin Sullivan/Getty Images (Neil Gorsuch, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren), Zach Gibson/Getty Images (James Comey), Jim Lo Scalzo - Pool/Getty Images (Donald Trump), iStock (Supreme Court).

As breaking news and scandals continue to erupt at an Usain Bolt-ish pace, many Americans are experiencing the early days of the Trump administration as a crash course in what makes our government kind-of-but-honestly-not-exactly work, with emphasis on the "crash."

Granted, even for those of us who have been mainlining C-SPAN for years, the current political climate is more than a little strange. For those just wading into the pool, it's like the water is 150 degrees, there are knives in the water, and oh yeah, it's peanut butter instead of water.

I spoke to four political novices who are getting acquainted with our political system for the first time — a teacher in Boston, a corporate retail worker (also in Boston), a marketing executive in New York, and a former advertising project manager in Detroit. Here are just a few of the surprising things they were shocked to learn are real parts of American politics:

1. If one political party wins enough elections in a state, they can change the maps to make it harder for their opponents to beat them in the next election.

If you've been paying attention to politics for a while, you know this is called gerrymandering, and you know it happens all the time. When a state redraws its districts to shut your party out of power, sure, you might throw up a rage post or two on your old blog, but when your party does it, hey, all's fair in love and war! After all, it is, has been for a long time, and is, for the most part, perfectly legal.

Now... consider gerrymandering as if you were learning about it for the first time.

You'd grab the pointiest pitchfork in grabbing range.

Take Texas. Its state government is completely controlled by Republicans and has been since 2003, which means they get to draw the congressional districts however they damn well please.

As a result, you get districts like Texas' 35th. Note its dispassionately illogical shape:

Image via National Atlas/U.S. Department of the Interior.

Imagine believing that congressional districts should make at least vague geographical sense and that your vote is distributed, weighted, and counted the same as anyone's anywhere in America. Then imagine looking at that.

Then, imagine learning that the 35th owes its gunky bottle-brush shape to the fact that it's 63% Latino. Texas Latinos vote pretty heavily for Democrats. If you wanted to dilute the Latino vote, the best way to do that would be to pack them all into one comically skinny but technically geographically contiguous region, creating one safe Democratic seat and a bunch of safe Republican seats around it.

You'd be furious.

In the case of Texas' 35th, the gerrymandering was so blatantly racially motivated that it recently lost a court challenge. But usually, states can get away with if they claim they're doing it for partisan — rather than racial — reasons, which is a bit like saying, "Sure, I punched him in the face, but not because I hate the guy — just because my arm was swinging really fast in his direction and my hand happened to be clenched, so it's not assault."

Boxing isn't fighting! It's just aggressive stretching in close proximity. Photo by skeeze/Pixabay.

If you were new to politics, you might think the system would intervene more often to put a stop to such blatant inequity. After all, this is America and we have checks and balances! Right?

Not exactly. And by "not exactly," I mean right now, you're waking up to the bizarro reality that...

2. There are no "checks and balances" if the people we elect don't want to check or balance each other.

The notion that evil or bad policy is ipso facto checked by our fair and just system is comforting — but hilariously wrong, as nearly all of the political newbies I spoke to reported being horrified to learn.

Of all the supposedly holy features of our government, perhaps none is more vaunted then the tripartite separation of co-equal powers — executive, legislative, and judicial — that you learned about in civics class. They're among the foremost concerns of our Constitution, praised by politicians left and right alike. You watched "Schoolhouse Rock" animations about them in middle school, where they were discussed in weird circus metaphors sung to you in a soothing Joni Mitchell voice. And you were soothed.

You feel good and serene about the nice normal people making the laws that govern your every waking hour. Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.

That song today, however, would probably feature singer James Hetfield, probably with bronchitis, and a gang of horny sea lions would be slapping at his throat.

We're all going to die. Photo by Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

When, as in 2017, one party controls the executive, legislative, and (probably soon) judiciary, that party can basically go hog-wild with its most ludicrously ideological, borderline unconstitutional ideas — and pretty much no one can stop them.

Several of the political newcomers I spoke to were particularly shocked at how far executive orders can go and how long they can stay in place, even when they're clearly illegal. Indeed, executive orders have become sort of like the Tom Brady Super Bowl Hail Mary of policymaking — presidents just give it a go and damn it to Wednesday if anyone tries to stop them. Republicans were livid when President Obama signed a series of executive orders protecting undocumented immigrants from deportation. And Democrats are furious now that President Trump has signed orders making it easier to kick them out and build a gigantic wall on the southern border. Congress can pass laws to overrule them. But if they don't want to, they won't, and right now, they clearly don't.

Sometimes, the old constitutional reflex kicks in, as with Trump's two travel bans, which were blocked in the courts. But even that might be a temporary victory. If Neil Gorsuch gets confirmed to the Supreme Court, reinstating its 5-4 conservative majority, things could easily change.

Aw shucks, this nice Colorado dad just thinks the law is the law, and if the law just so happens to line up completely 100% with the favored policy outcomes of Republican party political leaders in 2017, so be it! Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

True, the Constitution remains, technically speaking, the supreme law of the land. But a lot of bad stuff is constitutional, as many formerly carefree Americans are learning as they find themselves increasingly glued to the incoming stream of ludicrous news "Clockwork Orange"-style. The Supreme Court decision that led to the Japanese internment camps? Still hasn't been overturned! And even if an executive order or bad piece of legislation is unconstitutional, partisan forces are often enough to persuade enough legislative, executive, and judicial officials to pretend that it's all good, at least for a few weeks, years, or decades.

Add that to ubiquitous gerrymandering, and you begin to realize with ever-increasing dread that:

3. For politicians, their parties are bae (before all else), including bcs (before common sense) and btbiotap (before the best interests of the American people).

These people are all thinking about biting each others' faces off. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

If you didn't know much about how lawmaking worked, you'd probably assume it went something like this: Members of the two parties argue for a while about some bill or another, then get together, have a few beers, compliment pictures of each others' grandkids, and come up with something that basically lands in the middle of what they want. You know, compromise. It wasn't so long ago that this was the case.

Imagine how political newbies feel when they find out the truth, Bruce-Willis-gripping-his-bloody-gut-at-the-end-of-"The-Sixth-Sense"-style.

Sure, some members will occasionally buck their party leaders for strategic reasons, but for the most part, politicians these days defend their parties to the death — logic, reason, and, uh, you know, what's good for the country and the world be damned. Think about learning that for the first time and realizing that if you prefer, say, progressive policy outcomes, you'd be better off voting for a ferret with a "D" next to their name than a reasonable, well-spoken, moderate Republican doctor-war-hero-astronaut. And vice-versa. It would barely compute. And it should barely compute!

Don't blame me! I voted for Mr. Longfloppy. Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Since both parties are pretty well ferreted up at this point, you get a spectacle like James Comey's March 20 hearing, where the FBI director revealed that aides to the president of the United States and, perhaps, the president himself, are under investigation for potentially colluding with a foreign power to undermine an American election, and Republicans on the panel only wanted to grill him about who leaked this embarrassing revelation to the press. It's as if during the O.J. trial the prosecution had spent its time trying to slam Ron Goldman's parents for making such a big deal out of everything.

If this base-level skullduggery were news to you, you'd probably assume we, the people, could band together, decide on a few things we all agree on, agree to disagree on the rest, and vote these jokers out.

Except then you learn, in perhaps the most heinous twist of twists...

4. There are some politicians who actively make it as hard as possible for people to vote, and they're getting pretty good at it.

Wouldn't be surprised if this woman had to fight a few great whites to get here. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

This may be old news to some of us, but if you're one of the people just learning about voter ID laws for the first time, you'd probably feel like giving the nearest window a good bricking too.

Believe it or not, historically, voting isn't something Americans have been good at. Even in our presidential elections, only a little more than half of us do it. If you were newly engaged in politics, you'd probably assume that most politicians — grateful for the patriotic exercise of franchise that allowed them to serve their country — would want to make it easier.

Instead, you're learning that dozens of elected officials across America are actively trying to make voting harder. "Sure," the thinking apparently goes, "you technically can vote as long as you fill out forms A through Q in a timely fashion, bring the right laminated card, and survive the piranha-stocked moat we dug in front of this elementary school cafeteria."

The current weapon of choice for politicians getting off on taking away Americans' voting rights is the aforementioned voter ID law, which forces voters to bring identification to the voting booth. Many of these laws specifically ban types of IDs likely to be held by poorer, younger, browner folks (like student IDs) while permitting those likely to be held by older, whiter, more conservative folks (like gun licenses), which is obviously a huge coincidence that will be cleared up just as soon as hahahahahaha.

Felon disenfranchisement, which takes away the vote from convicted felons — who just so happen to be disproportionately black and brown — even after they've served their time, is another biggie.

This felon would definitely have her right to vote taken away just as soon as we figure out what she's guilty of. Photo by Rhona Wise/Getty Images.

And then there's the plain old refusal to streamline and improve the voting process that leads to random mishaps like being tripped up by a clerical error or having your registration lost and being forced to cast a provisional ballot, as one of the political newcomers I spoke to reported experiencing when she tried to vote for the first time in 2008.

Add it all up and you can see why someone just starting to engage with politics might be tempted to disengage right away. Yet many are choosing not to. They're choosing to stay involved and engaged, even when things are at their John-Malkovich-in-the-Malkovich-universe-iest.

And for some, that's because...

5. People power still exists, and it's pretty great to see up close.

Democracy, I am told, looks like this. Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images.

Even if you hadn't been paying much attention to the arcane inner workings of our government, a quick look out the window any time in the last few decades or so would probably lead you to believe that Americans were pretty content to let our elected officials do what they wanted without much taking-to-the-streets. You might even assume that sort of in-your-face activism was a relic of the '60s or earlier, the subject of grainy, black-and-white news footage and CNN baby boomer-bait documentaries, something that our couch-sitting, Arby's-inhaling, Kardashian-watching culture couldn't hope to live up to.

Instead, almost immediately following Donald Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, we got millions of women and allies marching for their rights in hundreds of cities large and small, thousands descending on airports across the country to show solidarity with refugees and immigrants, and groups organizing across the country to lobby their elected officials to protect their health care. It's like a Woody Guthrie deep cut that was just a little too commie-ish to make it onto your second-grade music class playlist, except it's really happening in 2017.

"The trees are green/And the canyons majestic/Seize the means of production/You have nothing to lose but your chains!" Photo by Al Aumuller/New York World-Telegram and the Sun.

A lot about the way our system works is messed up and has been for a long time. It needs to be reformed up the wazoo, and its wazoo probably won't get so much as a look from the current crop of swamp creatures we've elected. But as the countless Americans just waking up to the reality of our politics are discovering, there's a pretty seriously effective counterweight: us.

Even those of us who are jaded can admit — we're surprised.

Thanks to Abby Huntley, Hannah Eisenberg, Robert Fuhrer, and Mary Kay Gumbel for speaking with me for this piece.

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